Hugh Mortain SNELL

Service number 253914

Born: 1923
Died: August 4th 1944

Hugh was born in Croydon, the younger son of William Frederick Snell and his second wife. Olive Robinson. W.F. Snell’s first wife died in 1889 leaving him with a three-year-old son, William Ashley Futvoye Snell. In 1917, at the age of sixty-seven, he married the thirty-four year old Olive. He had known her for many years – she was staying with his mother and himself in 1901. They had a daughter, Barbara Riccia in 1920. He died on May 5th 1931 at Fyfield, Mark Way, Godalming leaving £2,377-5-1

Hugh followed his brother to Harrow and Matriculated in 1941. He was up at Christ Church for a year.

He was a cadet at Sandhurst in 1942 and was gazetted to the Scots Guards on January 29th 1943 [His half brother had served in the same regiment in WW1. He died in 1965.]

In 1997, a plaque, written in Italian and English, was placed on the corner of via Wolf and Lungarno Serristori, Florence. It recalls the night of August 3rd / 4th 1944, when Lt. Hugh M. Snell was mortally wounded, there, in a fight with the Germans. He was part of a reconnaissance patrol of British and Italian soldiers, who had penetrated into the part of Florence which was still under German control. A remembrance ceremony is held every August

He is buried in the Florence War Cemetery Plot II. E. 18.

Image: The plaque on Via Wolf recalls the death of Hugh M. Snell, the first to fall in the Allied liberation of the city.